John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

I was recently reading this fascinating interview with Jason Fried, Founder of 37signals. It’s a fascinating read, as was his book Rework. I must admit that I have a similar model for tech entrepreneurship to Jason Fried and it is quite different than what’s written about by most tech websites. Jason is much less about the flash and cash part of entrepreneurship and much more about building something of value in a long term sustainable way.

As I consider on these ideas, I started to wonder about the various EHR companies and which companies fall into the various entrepreneurship buckets.

Fast EMR
The fast EMR company is usually one that’s gone out and gotten a ton of funding from venture capital firms. If you’re an EHR company that’s gone out and raised millions and millions in funding, then you have no choice but to attack the market aggressively so that you can provide a return to your investors. There are actually a number of EHR companies that fit this profile, but the first one that will likely come into everyone’s mind is Practice Fusion. There $64 million in EHR funding means that they have to get a large portion of the EHR market. They no longer have the option of staying small but successful.

Let me be clear that there’s nothing wrong with being a Fast EMR. In fact, there are a lot of good things that come out of fast EMR companies that are trying to push the envelope when it comes to EHR adoption and how EHR should be done. It is entrepreneurship at work.

Slow and Steady EMR
On the opposite end of the spectrum are what I call the slow and steady EMR companies. These companies are often self funded or took in a much smaller investment and then used revenues to grow the company much like 37signals founder described. They slowly and steadily built their product, acquired customers and generated revenue.

I believe that SOAPware and Amazing Charts are the epitome of this type of company. They were both physician founded EMR companies that have built their user base slowly over time. They’ve never gone out and gotten the millions in funding. Instead they’ve grown organically over time.

Why Does This Matter?
In my e-Book on EHR selection, I talk about why it is important for you to understand the type of EHR company you are choosing. Would you rather “marry” the EMR tortoise or the EMR hare? The choice could change your EHR experience dramatically.

Disclosure: Practice Fusion, Amazing Charts and SOAPware are all advertisers on this site, but I didn’t discuss this post with them before posting it. Although, since they’re advertisers they were likely top of mind for me when I was writing this post.